A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing (25 page)

I step in water on my cold feet. Touch the white flesh. Damp the. Walking where the mud slips into my shoes. Rushes pricking winding ankles trip the. Not a new girl here.

Go out. Go out further where the water is fine.

On my bare legs. On my thighs. Knowing what I am. Come the. Still. My. Slipping over hips and stomach. On my mind. Through fingers combing there. Soak in my white shirt colder. Up the spine. Duck it duck now or I’ll never go in. The browny foam. Baptise. Creep up my throat. Above my head. Wash away all blood. I’ll under. Start to swim and water rolling through my hair. Scrape me free of. Clean now. All the purity I can. There is for me here. Far out. Far out.

Water blaze across with sun. No one to touch. Far out. Far gone the ground. I do not need I do not. Carry me over. And silent morning. No one to hear the lap lap on me. Island. Moving stealth and through the clear the brown but all the same. It lick off hurt my face and hands. Strip pain all the parts off me. Wash away. Wash into the deep with it. Go down there.

I see. That face mine in the water. I’m. Crying laughing always happy where water is. I am. Kicking my kicking legs. Extinguish all the lights I can. That’s gone. And now that’s gone.

More slowly on this water. More slowly. Where the centre is the darkest. Cannot see is black down in. That. A far far I am far from ground.

The black I swim in filled with light and things and clouds that were the sky. The coldest water. Deepest mirror of the past and in it I am. Drowned no fine. Fine look because I see you under. Because we are very young. And we are very clean here like when we wash our hands. When we’re in the rain. I was. His fingers in my mouth my eyes my hair. Stop. You break the surface up. Gasp. Air is. That’s what air is again.

We are in the water. Hands as white as numb and you splash brack and twigs at me above the black. With your good hand. Float. There is every missing bit. All bits of me I. And kicking my legs like I’m out to sea they are cold going cold on me. And plastic bags and bottles go by. When I was. When we were. Do you see? My feet are silver kicking through the frozen clouds beneath us. I know below me this water goes all the way down. I see the murk where fishes live. Those churned up leaves silt where I look down. Those houses for the dead where cold is coldest. Cannot see. This lake. This water going to the centre of the earth.

And I know what you say. Come on you say. Come with. Come down. Come down where the water turns to hot and rivers flowing rocks go by. Dive the. Dive with me. You say. You tell. You tell me your name and tell me the truth this time. Ssssh. We’ll live there for a thousand Lir years. There now. There now. Take my hand.

Let water take the thing away. Take body. Tired as I am as you are. Full and watered down and sure that oceans underground will take us. Everywhere we desire. Say yours I say I’m scared now. No you tell me. I never understand. And you say. Say it once. Hail holy queen. Poor banished children of Eve and you say oh sacred heart of Jesus I place all my trust in thee. There is no other one. No person more inside for fuck for work for. For I’m twenty now whenyou were gone. When were you gone?

Rise up the lake above me. Take me where the waters go. I’ll take your hand. You’ll show. You’ll show me all my lands and evil heart as you know it. Brother me. Clean here. Show me all the places of a soul. Where I will calm. And calm now. Give up dry land. I’m. Tired. Let it.

Go there.

Struggle down.

We are down. We are down down down.

And under water lungs grow. Flowing in. Like fire torch. Like air is. That choke of. Eyes and nose and throat. Where uncle did. No. Gone away. Where mother speak. Is deaf my ears. Hold tight to me. I. Will I say? For you to hear? Alone. My name is. Water. All alone. My name. The plunge is faster. The deeper cold is coming in. What’s left? What’s left behind? What’s it? It is. My name for me. My I.

Turn. Look up. Bubble from my mouth drift high. Blue tinge lips. Floating hair. Air famished eyes. Brown water turning into light. There now. There now. That just was life. And now.

What?

My name is gone.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to Edward Carey and Elizabeth McCracken for their unstinting support and encouragement. To my mother Gerardine McBride for the same. To Jarlath Killeen for being a friend indeed. And most of all, to my husband William Galinsky without whom this book could not have been written.

Table of Contents

PART I

PART II

PART III

PART IV

PART V